Holistic health mastery comes with time, patience and often through trial and error. A living testament to that fact is our guest for episode 10 of BiOptimizers’ Awesome Health podcast, my good friend Ronnie Landis.

Ronnie is a former martial arts expert and Olympic hopeful who changed paths in his 20s to pursue holistic health through vegan and raw foods. He has become a master in this arena and he’s here today to talk about the turning points in his journey, and his top three recommendations to start making changes to your health.

Join us on this edition of BiOptimizers’ Awesome Health podcast to hear those topics, and more.

More About Awesome Health with Ronnie Landis

Today Ronnie is a savant and master of his holistic health craft, but his passions began elsewhere when he was a child. From the age of 4 he was raised as a martial artist. He recalls his first conscious memory being Bruce Lee’s movie, Enter The Dragon.

Not surprisingly, Ronnie grew up to pursue a career in Taekwondo and basketball. He was an Olympic hopeful for Olympic-style Taekwondo and would later walk away from a try-out with the Golden State Warriors (a National Basketball Association team in the U.S.).

What drove him to pursue excellence in both of these arenas was the exploration of his potential as a human. These two passions consumed him until he was 19 when he began considering the health aspect of performance.

He understood his eating habits were not sustainable (he was eating crap, he admits) and his body was starting to experience some wear and tear from his athletic pursuits. He re-evaluated his food and lifestyle choices, turning to organic food. Then slowly he started to get into whole foods, grass-fed chicken, raw milk, etc.

The Power of Plants and Raw Foods

A few years later he realized his dharma was to be a role model for plant-based nutrition, which came about when he had his second knee surgery. A lot of light bulbs went off at the time – he realized performance was important but so was recovery. After his two knee surgeries, he didn’t know how he was going to pursue his athletic career and was riding on faith.

Then his awareness shifted to the power of plants in the human body. He started eating more fruit and vegetables, and going to the farmers markets. He became educated on raw food nutrition, the biggest epiphany for him as well as the practice of barefoot grounding. When switching to 100% plant foods and raw, he noticed within 30 days he could run 5 miles in the hills without pain – something he had been scared to do for years because of his knees!

On a visceral level, he understood his path and his life could change; he felt the reality of living a vegan and raw food diet. He went away from his athletic pursuits and passed on a try-out with the Golden State Warriors.

Instead, he was going to become the biggest speaker on the importance of a raw and vegan diet. That was nearly 20 years ago and he’s been pursuing that path ever since.

Ronnie’s Deep Dive Into The Raw and Vegan Lifestyle

I wanted to know if there was a person or event that shifted him from exploration into deep dive mode on raw and vegan food as a lifestyle. Ronnie says he began exploring what was out there, going to YouTube and studying the people in this arena. He followed Paul Chek’s work and then Marcus Patrick, who has since become a good friend of Ronnie’s.

Ultimately though, his biggest catalyst was David Wolfe. Ronnie knew if he wanted to master this way of living he had to follow the masters, and David is one of them. About two years after pursuing this way of life, Ronnie went to an event in San Francisco and met David. While that was an incredible experience, what was even more powerful for him was meeting so many people in this industry and discovering the power of the community. To this day many of the people he met there are his closest friends.

I asked him if this event in San Francisco was the turning point for him that solidified his desire to be a speaker for the raw and vegan movement. He said absolutely, it was like a veil was lifted for him! He felt inspired and grounded in his direction and saw a new level of his potential. He knew he could be in front of crowds and host events, too. It awoke a reality and he saw this was a career he could follow.

For Ronnie, after this event, the logical next step was to write a book. His first book was a little pamphlet-type publication called Activating The Superhuman. He calls it his permission slip to follow the book-writing path. That first book eventually became The LiveIt! Lifestyle: Dropping Diets Forever book. Next he wrote The Life Food Peak Performance System.

After those books, he wrote The Holistic Health Mastery Program. This book has also become an online holistic health course. It is an all-encompassing and comprehensive online video-based course that covers the spectrum of raw living food nutrition, plant-based nutrition, superfood nutrition and tonic herbalism. It goes into topics like detoxification strategies, hormone balancing, and neurological health among others.

Where to Start On Your Health Journey

I asked Ronnie what three things he would do differently if he were starting over, and what his recommendations would be for someone just beginning to change their diet and pursue a healthier way of living. Here’s what he said:

1. Water.
First, he’d start with water. From a biological and cellular standpoint, hydration is the thing that keeps us going. There are 10 layers of water molecules that surround our cells and over time they become dehydrated. Then our cells shrivel up and this leads to mutations, mutations can lead to disease formations.

He starts people on water and this makes the most amount of shifts. Raw living foods are rich in water so when someone drinks more water or eats a cucumber, celery, fruit or other water-rich food they tend to feel better. Their brain is clearer, their blood sugar improves as does any cardiovascular issues they may have.

Everything is like fish flakes in the water tank, and unless you clean the water the fish flakes (aka our food) doesn’t work as well.

Personally, he’s a spring water enthusiast but as a general rule he says to find the best water you can given your circumstances. Then start your day by drinking 1 liter of water every morning to flush out byproducts and acid crystals. By doing so you are freeing up the impactions that have built up through dehydration in the intestines, this helps flush yourself out and then hydrate again before eating your breakfast.

2. Healthy digestion.
The second recommendation he has is healthy digestion. Ronnie shares what has he personally learned about digestion, its importance and the trends he sees in his clients. He’s uncovered a lot of information about infectious organisms, pathogens, and parasites, as well as candida in its various forms, bacteria, etc.

From his experience, everyone who has grown up on an American lifestyle of diet and medical treatments (like antibiotics) has had or has a dysbiosis if they haven’t healed it.

But Ronnie says if you give up processed food and factory-raised animal products, your body will start to alert you to what it is sensitive to and what it is not. It’ll show you if you have an immune compromise or a digestive compromise.

An example of this is constipation. If you have elimination issues like Ronnie did, then you know that transit is blocked up and something is out of balance in your digestion. A healthy elimination process is 3-4 times a day, based on what he has learned in his research and what he experienced after he healed his gut.

3. Add organic, living foods to your diet.
His third recommendation if you are starting out is to introduce organic, living food into your diet.
Try more fresh fruits, veggies, soaked and sprouted nuts and seeds, fresh grass sprouts and fermented foods and green veggie juices. An easy thing to do is to add one salad to your diet, top it with fermented vegetables and healthy raw fats like avocado and cold-press extra virgin olive oil.

After giving us his top three recommendations for shifting your health, Ronnie and I also discuss the mistakes he has made personally. That discussion leads to an immeasurably valuable lesson from him about recognizing if you have an unhealthy addiction to anything, whether it be food, alcohol, intimacy, relationships, finances, etc.

Finally, we wrap up with a few questions including the most interesting health field he is studying right now, the newest health practice he is doing and his daily routine. You’ll hear the full details on those fascinating subjects, and more on episode 10 of BiOptimizers’ Awesome Health podcast!

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. Always check with a physician before taking any supplement